Ant Control Maintenance: Keeping Your Natomas Home Ant-Free Long-Term

ant infestation on kitchen floor
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We’d like to discuss the advantages of ant removal for your home, but there’s a lot more to cover here when it comes to keeping your home ant-free for months and years to come. It all starts with understanding how ants grow and develop, how they build their intricate colonies, and why they like to come into our homes. With that background, as well as some essential prevention tips, you can make sure that your home stays ant-free for the foreseeable future. 

The Life Cycle Of Ants: How Ant Colonies Develop

These are the four stages of the ant life cycle: egg, larva, pupa, and, finally, adult. It doesn’t take very long for ants to progress through these stages, just a couple of weeks. This is a big part of how ants build their colonies so quickly, and it’s also why there always seem to be more ants, even if you’ve already taken care of a few dozen. 

How do ants communicate? Ant communication via pheromone trails is extremely important to the development of an ant colony. Worker ants are able to quickly tell each other about sources of food and threats to the colony as well. 

Ant Problems: Health Concerns And Property Damage

Ant control for homeowners is especially important because of the variety of problems that different types of ants can cause. 

For example, Argentine ants, which are common in the area, are, for all intents and purposes, a pretty typical kind of ant. They’re not known for stinging, but, like many kinds of ants, they can spread germs as they walk around the home. Ants can easily spread bacteria like E. coli, strep, and salmonella. 

Then, there are the ants that cause serious property damage, such as carpenter ants. Carpenter ants don’t actually eat wood, but they do chew through wood in order to make their nests. Over a significant period of time, this means that carpenter ants can cause serious structural damage to your property, necessitating costly repairs. These are just some of the reasons why ant prevention is so important. 

Ant Prevention Is Key: Effective Tips And Tricks

Moving on to ant prevention tips for your home, here are some key things to keep in mind:

  • Make sure there are no openings in the outer walls of your house.
  • Don’t leave food out for long periods of time. Place leftovers in sealed containers. 
  • Repair leaking pipes and remove sources of standing water. 
  • Use door sweeps on exterior doors. 
  • Regularly check for scouting ants. 

We really want to emphasize the importance of cutting ants off from sources of food. This is essential for keeping ants away. If they don’t have a source of food, they’ll have to start looking somewhere else. 

Professional Ant Control: A Great Way To Keep Ants Out For Good

Professional ant control is a way that you can guarantee an ant infestation will be completely removed from your home. DIY ant control is technically possible, but professional control is more convenient, more effective, and allows you to keep your distance from an ant colony that is potentially dangerous. 

It’s especially important to contact a pest control service in the earliest stages of a developing ant infestation so that the problem can be dealt with quickly. Ants shouldn’t be given the time to expand their numbers and cause even more problems. 

Pest control companies can also provide you with regular inspections to make sure that your prevention efforts are successful and to spot signs of new issues before they worsen. 

If you’ve been looking for an ant exterminator near you in the Natomas area, you’ve found them. Contact Bell Pest Control right away to ask any questions you might have or to set an appointment. 

Contact us to schedule your complimentary inspection, and we’ll provide you with a free estimate for our services.